Film Reviews by Steve

Welcome to Steve's film reviews page. Steve has written 1043 reviews and rated 8259 films.

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Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Lloyd v Keaton.

(Edit) 04/02/2021

This Buster Keaton classic  is strikingly similar to Harold Lloyd's earlier The Kid Brother, but on a different scale. Keaton's location shoot is more striking and his sets and stunts more ambitious. I think Lloyd's film is funnier. Both play ingenues, though in their mid thirties. Harold makes a romcom. This is more of an action comedy.  

Buster is a bookish milksop brought up by his mother on the east coast. He leaves to work on his dad's ramshackle river boat, and falls in love with the daughter of the owner of a fleet of state of the art steamships. A situation desired by neither father. Love conquers all, but not until Buster has proven himself by saving everyone from drowning in a cyclone.  

The film is best known for its astonishing final 25 minutes when the town is ripped apart by the high wind and washed away in a great tide. Including the famous gag of the front panel of a frame house collapsing over a hapless Buster, saved by an open upstairs window. It was a stunt he had used before, but not as impressively.   

Credit to the scenery and props department, their work on the storm scene is phenomenal, and complements Keaton's extraordinary performance as the man fighting nature. It is a tour de force and one of the great passages in cinema. Just watching him walking into the wind is worth your ticket. And no one falls as well as Buster.

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The Kid Brother

Silent Romcom.

(Edit) 04/02/2021

This is a sweet boy-meets-girl romcom, until the amazing last twenty minutes of action when Harold Lloyd rousts a huge redneck who has stolen public money from his dad. Harold plays the weakling youngest son of a family of tough rustic musclemen led by his father, the sheriff. The boy admires them devotedly, and dreams of being just like them.

The virtuous Jobyna Ralston comes into town with a crooked medicine show, and her associates steal the town's savings.  So Harold goes to get the money back, employing the inventive intellect that no one else in the family or community has any interest in; they being thick in the arm, and in the head.

Lloyd plays his usual archetype, a skinny, optimistic do-gooder we can root for. The film is dense with charming, clever gags and the set-piece climax on a wrecked ship gives the hero plenty of opportunity to display his wholesome determination as well as the star's genius for physical comedy.

 Lloyd made more at the box-office in the 1920s than any of his great contemporaries. But it's 1927 and the talkies will change everything.  Lloyd did better than some, though his clean-cut hero went out of fashion in the screwball era. But, for me he is the funniest of the silent comedians.

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Sweet Smell of Success

Actors' Film.

(Edit) 04/02/2021

This kicks off like a typical late fifties noir as Elmer Bernstein's big band scores a familiar montage of the neon lit streets of Manhattan. Then James Wong Howe picks up his camera and, wanders through the avenues and backstreets, clubs and theatres of Broadway. This location tracking was completely new for film noir and it  still looks fabulous.

Despite the human corruption and the noir aesthetic, there is no actual legal crime.  JJ Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) controls Broadway through his popular newspaper column and the secrets he holds over its players. He owns press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) because Falco needs the column. In turn the agents court Falco for his access to Hunsecker.

The screenplay was written by Clifford Odets, the liberal who named names to HUAC. The cynical showbiz food chain of Broadway represents the iniquities of capital and politics. The big cat feeds on the vulnerable minions of the neon jungle. Hunsecker has an unspoken incestuous obsession with his sister and leans Falco to break her engagement to a jazz guitarist

Manhattan is controlled by the syndicate which means Hunsecker, a populist with a god-complex who brazenly drums out his phoney patriotics and dares anyone to demur. He has a logo which gives him the eyes of Big Brother. There are no good guys and no sweeteners at the fade out. It is an intelligent, artistic work of overwhelming pessimism.

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Sherlock Jr.

Sherlock Jr.

(Edit) 04/02/2021

Buster Keaton perfected his Great Stoneface persona over years in vaudeville and dozens of shorts dating back to 1917. By Sherlock Jr. he was at his peak. He plays a projectionist who aspires to be a detective. Unfortunately he is fitted up by his unscrupulous rival for a girl to appear the thief of her father's pocket watch.

Then Buster falls asleep while showing a film about a jewel thief, and dreams that he enters the screen and solves the crime. As it is a dream, the events become increasingly surreal. Other silent comics used incongruous back projection, but here Buster interacts with his fantasy, distorting the events.

It's a brilliant set up. Keaton was also an extraordinary physical comedian, and the action is full of amazing acrobatics. Like when he stands on a huge water-pipe as it swings across the road and deposits him in the passenger seat of a getaway car. Which actually broke his neck...

 The contrast between Keaton's deadpan exterior and his outrageous escapades is the key to his comedy. It is hard to watch Keaton's extravagant, show-stopping stunts and not be overwhelmed by his ambition and craft. He is the most enterprising and gifted of all the '20s comedians. Sherlock Jr. is his masterpiece.

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Human Desire

Includes big spoilers.

(Edit) 07/02/2021

Though made in the 50's, this is typical of the film noirs of a decade earlier. There is a femme fatale, portrayed by the incomparable Gloria Grahame. Glenn Ford is the ill-fated male dupe back from the war. Only now it's Korea rather than WWII. He returns to resume his job on the railways.

Gloria plays a traditional enough archetype, a sexually distorted looker motivated by greed. She seduces the engine driver to persuade him to murder her violent, abusive husband (Broderick Crawford). For most of the film she seems a victim who is physically and mentally tormented by this jealous brute. And she was sexually assaulted at sixteen by her guardian.  

Eventually we learn that much of the web the wife spins to entrap the fall guy is lies. She is damaged by exploitative men, but our sympathy finally snaps when we see the moral vacuum she has learned to conceal. She's quite a horrifying figure. Though ultimately unredeemable, we see that as a woman in that period, her options are limited.    

No one played hot sleazy trouble like Gloria. The noir plot is interesting, and Fritz Lang exploits the railway setting for suspense and shadows and symbolism. GG and Ford are incandescent together- as they were a year earlier in another Lang noir. It's not quite as great as The Big Heat, but still a genre classic.

  

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The Hitch-Hiker

Lupino's Best.

(Edit) 07/02/2021

 This is the best of half a dozen excellent, independently produced dramas directed by London born Ida Lupino in the 1950s before she moved onto a career in television. She also co-wrote the tense, laconic original screenplay based on recent real life events.

Two old army buddies on a fishing trip pick up a hitcher who turns out to be the serial killer murdering drivers all along a rural highway in Southern California. He forces the friends to drive 500 miles to a small harbour town where he plans to escape to Mexico.

He will kill them on arrival, but sooner if they don't play ball. It's a race against time while the cops close in as the men drive south through the desert. It's mostly a three hander.  Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy are perennial support actors who seize a rare chance to lead. William Talman is sensational as the manipulative psychopath.

This is an incredibly suspenseful film which makes a virtue of desolate desert locations as  it plots the shifting balance of power. Every stranger triggers a crisis. The pals are tough and resourceful, but it is Talman as the menacing killer with a fascistic worldview who stays in the memory.

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Key Largo

Gangster Noir.

(Edit) 10/02/2021

Humphrey Bogart visits the family of the dead soldier he fought beside in Italy: his father (Lionel Barrymore) and widow (Lauren Bacall). Bad timing. The hotel they run on the Florida Keys is taken over by gangsters led by Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) while the building is battered by a mighty hurricane. Escape is impossible.  

It's the same set up as The Petrified Forest (1936) in which Bogart played the outlaw Duke Mantee as the last gasp of the wild west, an individualist. But Rocco is far more insidious. He buys the political process and operates in plain sight, subverting justice, raking profit out of the system.

This time Bogart is on the right side of the law.  He plays his signature role, the loner who won't stick out his neck for anyone (but then does). But his status as an outsider is no longer a symbol of American isolationism in early WWII, as it was in Casablanca. It is because having survived  the war, he is disillusioned by the hold men like Rocco have on America.

Crime is now organised and corrupts legitimate business. This would become a key theme of fifties mob films. The politician on the make and gangster bosses protected by the cops and City Hall would become familiar film noir personnel. Bogart and Bacall's last film together is a classic. Kudos too for Claire Trevor's well deserved Oscar as Rocco's boozy moll.

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Gun Crazy

Cult Noir.

(Edit) 09/02/2021

Poverty row cult film based on the Bonnie and Clyde legend directed by Joseph H. Lewis who shot many classy low budget noirs. John Dall and Peggy Cummins are dynamite together as two outlaws compelled in different ways by their fatal obsession with guns.

She is a poor, sexy circus shooter who acts by reflex, triggered either by violent crime or lust. He is a working class kid who finds status through his talent with a gun. Driven by his desire for her, he is drawn into crime, holding up stores, and then banks, leading to murder.  

Dall and Cummins are sensational. They are made for each other, except, he can't kill, and she has to kill! Cummins is a revelation. She is hot trash, so happy when she is stealing, so fulfilled when she is killing. It's a miracle that she got this part. It's unlike anything else she did.

There's a sassy script from the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo and the direction is ostentatiously stylish. It is set in a timeless rural west it has the feel of a depression era gangster film, all getaway cars and shoot outs. The wild, desolate locations in poor rural towns conveys a powerful ambience of encroaching despair.

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The Big Combo

Noir Classic (spoilers).

(Edit) 07/02/2021

It's is a face off between a detective (Cornel Wilde) and sociopathic mob boss (Richard Conte).  The gangster defines high achievers as those most able to hate, as they will destroy others to reach their goals.  But that also applies to the cop, who will take his adversary down by any means .  

He will even sacrifice Conte's traumatised moll (Jean Wallace) who Wilde has fallen in love with. She is a cultivated, educated woman in an environment where those accomplishments have no value. The detective exploits his murdered, stripper girlfriend too: 'I treated her like a pair of gloves. If I was cold, I called her up'.

The gangster's deputy (Brian Donlevy) is a traumatised punch bag who can't take it anymore. Or dish it out. Empathy is his tragic flaw. His demise, shot in silence when Conte removes Donlevy's hearing aid is classic noir: 'I'm gonna give you a break. I'm gonna fix it, so you don't hear the bullets'.  

This is expressionist art, photographed by noir legend John Alton. There is a tough, ominous screenplay from Philip Yordan which is sometimes tender but usually brutal. By '55, censorship was being eased. The murders are violent and onscreen, and there's a pair of obviously gay hitmen. It's one of the best B films ever made.

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The Phenix City Story

Includes spoilers.

(Edit) 07/02/2021

This violent true story may be the nearest Hollywood got to the style and daring of Italian neorealism. It was shot with a documentary crew while the real world events were still taking place. There is no incidental music, just ambient sound. It was filmed on location at the actual places where the events happened.  

The film begins with interviews with local people who attest to the authenticity of the film. Director Phil Karlson even got actors to wear the clothes of the people they portrayed! The cast was resolutely unstarry. Kathryn Grant would become well known but this was her debut.

The incidents in the film are hard to believe. A city in Alabama was controlled by a criminal gang who used violence and murder during elections to control the public, and ran the police to ignore vice and to suppress reform. There was no law and order. The film was made while the court case trying the killers was still in progress.  

This is an inspiring story of bravery and determination.  It's a rare example of a film about organised crime being defeated through democratic processes, rather than a single heroic vigilante. It is a classic work of cinema vérité made at almost no cost. 

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The Stratton Story

Sport Bio.

(Edit) 17/04/2022

Hard to imagine that this folksy, corny biopic could work without the everyman qualities of James Stewart. Sam Wood returned to baseball- after Pride of the Yankees- and miraculously manages to excise nearly all the sentimentality from the life of Monty Stratton, a pitcher for the Chicago White Sox in the thirties who recovered from an above knee amputation to play again.

It's the ultimate Hollywood Americana, the story of a country boy from rural Texas who makes good in the major leagues. The rags to riches narrative of the first part of the film draws on the myth of the American dream. And the star gives us a character we can unconditionally root for. It adds up to cheerful optimistic cinema.

Unless the audience can suspend their cynicism, this isn't going to work! But it only once strays into mawkishness: when Monty shoots off his leg and commands his dog go for help... There are familiar archetypes; the unconditional love of his stoical ma, the drunk former star who cleans up to mentor Monty to the big time. This is the first time peppy June Allyson plays James Stewart's romantic interest.

There are cameos from major league baseball stars to convey a little authenticity on the field, though Stewart is clearly no demon pitcher. There's a great script which allows Monty far more wit than the usual Hollywood country boy. It's easy enough to mock its good hearted ideals, but for me it's the best baseball film of the studio era.

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Tarzan and His Mate/Tarzan Finds a Son

Tarzan and his Mate.

(Edit) 26/11/2013

This is one where Jane's clothes keep falling off! When not swimming naked, Jane was shot in a two piece. In the later sequels, the censors ensured Maureen O'Sullivan wore a dress, after a fuss created by the Catholic League of Decency... She has a wonderful chemistry with her still-slim Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) which is ostentatiously physical.  

The attraction today is for its pre-code exotica and the prestigious production values. There are acrobatics, magnificent sets, underwater scenes and a run out for MGMs zoo animals. Tarzan wrestles a mechanical crocodile. Viewed from today, he seems an ecological hero, as he seeks to defy the European ivory trade in his carbon zero, off grid wilderness...

Unfortunately this is no longer the fabulous family entertainment it once seemed: partly because of its antiquity; but mainly because of the racism. Not so much the British hunters treating Africans with such indifference, as that may be realistic. But because the indigenous people are stereotyped so grotesquely, as was usual in 1930s Hollywood.  

It is the best of the Weissmuller Tarzan films, with O'Sullivan a most beautiful Jane. Tarzan was never more monosyllabic, a kind of parody of fantasy machismo, but Johnny has a pleasant comic touch and the stars create plenty of screwball sparkle. But for all its various merits, the racism makes the film now a transgressive experience.

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The Prisoner of Zenda

Classic Swashbuckler.

(Edit) 07/04/2022

The best of the '30s Hollywood adventures. It's an improbable fantasy but so romantic that this hardly matters. Ronald Colman plays dual roles: the king in-waiting of a small middle European state who is kidnapped on the day of his coronation; and his distant, but identical relative, Major Rudolph Rassendyll, formerly of the British army, who steps into the royal shoes on the big day.

The Major is soon up to his neck in courtly intrigue, and dallying with the king's beautiful betrothed (Madeleine Carroll). The support cast is superb, particularly Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as a sort of wicked mirror image of the Englishman. Alfred Newman's score is alternatively rousing and tender. The solo violin motif that accompanies the love scenes is a wonderful tearjerker.

The film is so irresistible mainly thanks to Ronald Colman. He is phenomenal; so gallant and polished. Naturally... as an English gentleman, he possesses an instinctive regard for virtue, which he defends with an insouciant gift for adventure. Colman tosses off his self deprecating daring with an arch of the brow.  It's an endearing performance of limitless charm.

In the end, everyone left alive does their duty. The elegant princess gives up her love for the imposter. Maybe this was meant to invoke the recent British abdication crisis... Sure, this film is superficial and sentimental, but it is a fantasy of huge appeal, with a definitive action hero performance from its star.

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Sunset Boulevard

Classic noir.

(Edit) 09/02/2021

Billy Wilder coldly picks away at the soul of Hollywood in this dark meditation on the film business: half horror, half thriller. It is a typically cynical Wilder vision, famously narrated by a dead man. William Holden is the minor screenwriter floating in the pool of forgotten silent film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) face down with a bullet in his back.

The mansion Norma shares with her former director/husband, now servant (Erich von Stroheim) is a fascinating location: part morbid dream; part mausoleum. It is a kind of Hollywood purgatory, a development hell. Holden tries to finagle a deal with death, but he is doomed. He is a ghost writer.

There are many gorgeous gothic touches from Wilder and co-author Charles Brackett, like the funeral of Norma's dead chimp, or the wind that blows low eerie echoes through an old cinema organ. The film is full of delicious insights into cinema and its history. And there are fascinating cameos from legends of the silent era.

Holden is fine as the hubristic, cursed intruder, but Gloria is something more; she is truly strange. Norma entraps the writer in his journey through the moral emptiness of his desire to succeed at any cost.  There is the expressionist look of film noir, but it's Wilder's pessimism about human nature that most makes Sunset Boulevard a legend.

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Mutiny on the Bounty

Epic Adventure

(Edit) 07/04/2022

MGMs ambitious historical drama is one of the grandest productions of the 1930s. It recreates the brutal conditions on a British merchant ship in 1787, the year of the famous mutiny against William Bligh (Charles Laughton) led by Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable). Laughton overacts to huge effect, making Bligh one of the great screen villains, but also a caricature.

Ships' companies were sometimes press-ganged, or co-opted convicts who had their sentences transmuted. This Bounty is crewed by a gang of expat British character actors who have to combine providing the comic relief, singing nautical ballads and dancing the hornpipe with contributing a growing background noise of justified resentment.

 It's an epic adventure yarn that tells the broad outline of history faithfully. It only really slows during the sojourn to the tropical island of Tahiti, but we do get to see the surprisingly homoerotic cavorting of the bare chested Gable and Franchot Tone. It is the unbuckling of traditional order during this stopover that makes Bligh's resumed malevolence finally unbearable.

The story looks for a balance between its two protagonists. It must ultimately side with Christian but it doesn't overlook the harmful consequences of mutiny. The film tidies up its themes too conveniently to be credible. But as a spectacle, this is magnificent. It puts the historic, seagoing way life on screen with a lively vigour. It's still the best version of this story.

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